


What We Make

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, FitzSimmons Secret Santa 2017, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, New Year's Eve, Shamelessly Soft FitzSimmons, TFSN Secret Santa, alternate title: how often can FitzSimmons literally touch in under 3000 words?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: After one hell of a year, FitzSimmons spend a soft and snowy New Year's Eve at the Simmons' family estate to recover and enjoy each other's company.  Plus, Fitz has a surprise for Jemma, and it's a little more than a midnight kiss.





	What We Make

**Author's Note:**

> for @yourfitzsimmons on tumblr for the FitzSimmons Secret Santa.
> 
> Shamelessly Soft(TM) FitzSimmons with lots of physical contact & proximity bc we all need & deserve it, especially them! I hope you like it! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a happy New Year!

“What are you doing out here?”

Fitz turned toward the sound of light, snickering laughter, to see Jemma step out into the courtyard. She still had on her flannel pyjamas, and a jacket and slippers, and had tucked her hands under her elbows for warmth in the crisp morning air. Fitz was decked out to the nines, in a thick coat, a scarf and woollen hat with flaps over his ears, but he’d been out here for some hours now and his nose was red and numb. Still he smiled.

“Jemma! You slept late.” 

“Late?” Jemma scoffed. “It’s the middle of winter, I get up with the sun. And we’re on holiday. What have you been doing this whole time?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Fitz shrugged. “I went for a walk. ‘m okay now." 

Seeing her frown in concern, Fitz opened the flap of his jacket, inviting Jemma to dart across the snow-spattered stone to nestle in against his side. She kissed his cold cheek, and her lips were warm. 

“Are you sure?” she asked. 

“Yes.” Fitz let out a deep and cleansing breath. “It’s New Year’s Eve. This flaming garbage pile of a year is nearly over. What’s there not to be happy about?”

“Touch wood,” Jemma muttered, and both of them quietly knocked on the bench on which they sat. Just in case. 

Then cynical Jemma was back, ever-challenging; this time poking holes in Fitz’s idea that the notion of New Year’s was some sort of magical point of renewal. First of all, she argued, there was the idea that time was all relative – that Daisy in LA would have a different New Year from them in Sheffield, for example; and that Fitz had lived out his full year while Jemma had skipped somewhere in the vicinity of four months of it, thanks to the mysteries of time travel. Secondly, Jemma insisted, nothing consequential would change within the next 24 hours. The sun would still rise. Shield would still be disavowed and on the run. She and Fitz would still be together… or so help her God. 

Fitz smiled a secret little smile at that, but he didn’t point out how on that last point, they could both be right. Instead he simply said: 

“Shall we go for a walk?” 

\-- 

They wandered the grounds of the Simmons’ family estate for some time and finished up in the stables. Annexed to the house, they were heated to the point where Jemma found herself quite comfortable, and Fitz found he had to start peeling off layers. Hugging his coat to his chest, he eyed a nearby horse suspiciously, and Jemma laughed as she exchanged her slippers for riding boots.

“Relax, Fitz, it’s just Reggie. He’s twenty something and his teeth are falling out. He’s not coming to get you.” 

One of the younger, sleeker horses further down the isle whickered ominously and Fitz pressed his lips together. Were they somehow ganging up on him? 

“I’ve got nothing against that old codger if he’s got nothing against me,” Fitz clarified, though he wasn’t quite convinced. He shot the young mischief-maker a glare before turning back to the ringleader. _Reggie._ Jemma slipped into his stall and started patting and coo-cooing at him and Fitz huffed. “I just don’t like horses, that’s all.”

“Really?” Jemma frowned. “I thought you would, Romantic heart that you are. How’re you supposed to whisk me away with six white horses if you can’t handle one grumpy chestnut who’ll do anything for an apple?”

“Easily, apparently,” Fitz scoffed, noting the calm and confident air about her, even so close to the glaring menace. “Give the horses to you.” 

Jemma beamed, a glint of mischief in her eye. “And you’ll be what, riding a motorcycle?”

“I’ll have you know that Hunter left me a top notch leather jacket, actually.” 

“Left you?” Jemma checked. 

Fitz felt a tug at his heart and closed his arms tighter around himself. “I mean, gave. He gave it to me. Slip of the tongue. But I can bloody well ride a motorbike, is my point.” 

“Not with me on the back, you can’t. If I’m going that fast without any protection I’ll take a form of transport with its own brains, thanks.” 

“Really? Because I could build a motorcycle that can actually tell the difference between a ghost and a plastic bag.”

Jemma guffawed. “Wrong.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’re excused.” 

“Who’s the engineer here?”

Fitz gestured to himself. Jemma stuck her nose in the air. 

“You’re operating on a flawed premise, Mr Engineer,” she scolded. “You’re assuming that a camera could actually see a ghost, which implies that ghosts exist.”

“They do to old Reginald here I bet though, don’t they?”

“Don’t listen to the rude man, Reggie!” Jemma gasped, scandalised, and pretended to cover the horse’s ears. To Fitz, she hissed: “He’s the original ‘horse power’! At the very least, show a little respect for the origins of your craft.” 

Fitz shrugged. “The first cars were 1.5 horsepower – and I mean, those were the absolute, really rubbish ones. An’ this guy’s half a horsepower, at best.”

“Ugh, _Fitz.”_ Jemma rolled her eyes. Then she had an idea. “Actually, there’s one more stop on our tour I think you’ll like. Still not a lot of horsepower, but it’s in a form you might actually appreciate. Have you ever set eyes on a real-life Model T?” 

\--

Later that afternoon, Jemma went to find Fitz, and brought along two cups of piping hot tea. Then Fitz emerged from the garage in camo pants and a grease-smudged white muscle shirt, and she very nearly dropped them both. Fitz grinned at her.

“What?” he teased. “It’s hot in there.”

She refrained from some embarrassing comment like how she _bet it is,_ by taking a sip of her tea. She flinched at its scalding heat, and was greatly amused to watch Fitz do the same a moment later. She laughed at him, and he blushed a little and brushed his nose, leaving a little smudge of grease behind. Something about the angle, or the expression, or the whole bizarrely out of place aesthetic of it in the midst of their stormy lives made her laugh again, and Fitz smiled softly, cherishing the sound. 

“What is it?” he wondered, more innocently this time. 

“Nothing,” she insisted, shaking her head. “It’s just – you look like you’ve walked off the set of the BBC. Some sort of World War era period drama. Very melodramatic.” 

“Ah yes,” Fitz mused, letting his tea tip into the snow in favour of pulling Jemma toward himself and wrapping his hands around her her hips. She squeaked and set her cup aside, eager to slide in closer as Fitz waxed lyrical: 

“The lowly mechanic, destined to fall in love with somebody above his station? A childhood friend, perhaps. There’s years of pining, wondering what he should do about it, and he finally decides to tell her but alas! He gets conscripted.” 

“Don’t even joke about that,” Jemma scolded. “Unless, of course, this is the moment when the lady of the house starts to realise that perhaps she’s been feeling the same way and when he leaves, she can’t bear to be stuck at home without him, so maybe she enlists too.”

“As a nurse,” Fitz added, “because of course, the mechanic is about to do something ridiculously grand and dramatic.” 

“And she needs to be there when he wakes up, to hide how worried she is by telling him off by calling him something very British like –“ 

“You daft, barmy plonker!”

Jemma snorted, and rolled her eyes at Fitz’s atrocious accent, but he just beamed at her and it was such a rare expression on him these days, and so unreservedly happy, that she didn’t even bother trying to hold back her smile. 

“- but then they kiss,” she continued, “and they get out of the war and go home.” 

Fitz hummed uncertainly, his own smile wavering. 

“But he can’t give her the life she deserves,” he pointed out. 

Jemma saw the spiral he was about to stumble down, and reached out to stop him. She cupped his hands in hers. They were still so warm. And when she looked up into his eyes she saw that same warmth, even if it was tainted by doubt and sorrow. 

“Oh, but he can,” she insisted. “That’s how these things are supposed to end. They’re not rich, but they’re happy.” 

Fitz sighed. He looked around the grounds – the ridiculously large grounds; this was well and truly an _estate -_ and thought back on the veritable museum of fancy old cars he’d had the pleasure of examining just now. Each one, alone, would empty out his bank account and then some. Even an old nag like Reggie would make a serious dent. Let alone the house, or the lands that formed a frosted fairytale world around them. Yet Jemma was standing amongst it all, staring up at him with her honey-coloured eyes, and he knew with his whole heart that she was telling the complete and utter truth. 

“Are you sure?” he pressed, just in case. 

“Oh, Fitz.” Jemma sighed. “You daft, barmy plonker.”

Fitz smirked, and Jemma was sure she recognised that glint of mischievous purpose from somewhere. His mood seemed to lift all of a sudden, and like a kite on a warm wind, he was swept away with the inspiration. 

“Be right back,” he breathed. “I’ve got to see a man about a horse.”

He kissed her on the nose, and sprinted away down a garden path. Jemma grimaced, only to watch his figure reappear and duck back inside the garage. He emerged again with a jacket on, and disappeared into the growing mist. 

\--

It was evening by the time he returned. It was not late, but a deep purple twilight lit what was visible of the sky. Only a handful of stars peeked through the clouds, and Jemma smiled up at them from her cosy reading spot in bed. Her smile soon turned to concern, however; it had been snowing, though lightly, for some time, and Fitz still had not made an appearance. Surely he could not have gotten lost. Was he still planning his surprise, or had he perhaps gotten cold feet? It was unlike him, but he had been through a lot recently. Should she go looking for him or did he need this time alone? 

She’d pondered these questions a few times over the last few hours, and each time she leant ever more toward the former. This time tipped her over the edge and she rolled out of bed with a sudden gusto, swept up her coat and stormed toward the doorway, a woman on a mission –

Only to have the door flung open in her face, and for Fitz to fly in, stripping off scarf and coat and mittens as the heating, and not to mention the fireplace, swiftly began to defrost him. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologised to Jemma’s baffled expression. “Couldn’t find it for a while - I underestimated how different it would all look in the snow. And I didn’t bring a horse. It’s too bloody cold out, I thought the old man’s knees might snap off. But Jemma –“ 

He snatched her hands excitedly, and rested his forehead against hers for a moment and then paused, as if this position helped him catch his breath. His cheeks and nose were red, his hair and eyebrows dotted with rapidly melting snowflakes, and usually this would make him grumble for days. He wasn’t one for the cold. Right now, however, he barely seemed to notice.

Jemma, meanwhile, was glad for his anchoring hands. Her mind had been swanning around the possibility of what was about to happen ever since he’d run off into the snow. Even before that, actually. In fact, if she was honest, she’d seen this coming for months now. She tried to keep it together – if nothing else, she could be wrong. He could be very excited about something that she gave no care for at all. He could have simply found a very beautiful gift or sight he wished to show her which, while exquisite, would be a let-down in the face of what she was expecting. But no, she knew him, and she knew that he must have been dreaming of this moment forever and that somehow he was standing in it right now. 

She squeezed his hands. 

“Fitz?” she prompted. 

“Jemma.” He took a deep breath. “I know life is a mess, but I’ve done a lot of thinking these last few days, while we’ve been out here. About Hunter, Daisy, myself, us… and I’ve been thinking about how we stopped the world from being torn apart, and time, and the fact that I travelled _through_ time, which actually shouldn’t be possible and I still don’t really understand because the world will have to end for us to be sent to save it, so we can’t ever actually succeed… but then I thought, if the world does end, I want to be with you. And if it doesn’t, I want to be with you anyway.” 

Jemma smiled, tears pricking at her eyes as – of course – he took her breath away. He looked quite breathless himself, actually, and she was not surprised; in his shoes, she probably would not have even made it this far. 

“I choose you, Jemma,” he insisted. “I will always choose you. I don’t want you to think that I’ve deluded myself into thinking this is some kind of magic fix, fairytale ending for us. I know it’s not. All I mean is… Isn’t that what matters? Us, our choice? Screw the cosmos. We’ve beaten the sky, the ocean, space, and time. What else can it throw at us? And if it does think of something - well, we’ll get through it better together, won’t we?” 

As Fitz lowered himself down onto one knee, Jemma bit her lip, unable to think of the right words to say short of a strangled squealing kind of sound. However, when he began to curse quietly under his breath – struggling to balance as he patted his own pockets down in search of something – that incomprehensible urge to cry turned to laughter. 

“Ah, Jemma dear,” Fitz interrupted. “I think there’s something for you in the left pocket of my coat.” 

He gestured toward where he’d dropped it on the bed and, heart in her throat, Jemma retrieved what he had been talking about. It was a ring box, of course, and her hands trembled with the anticipation and she popped it open and gasped in delight. It was a simple ring, and from the looks of it, old, but when she slipped it onto her finger and let it twinkle in the light of the stars and the fire, it simply radiated love. 

“It was my Nan’s,” Fitz explained. “Mum threw hers out, but she said Nan and Grandpa Henry had a love worth sharing. So. D’you like it?” 

“Of _course_ I do!” Jemma cried. “Why would you even ask that, honestly?”

“I want you to have everything you want.”

Jemma grabbed Fitz by his collar, and pulled him to his feet. She pulled him forward until his lips eagerly found hers, and they kissed until they were dizzy, and then some. 

“Happy New Year, Fitz,” Jemma whispered. 

“Actually, midnight’s not for another six hours,” Fitz pointed out. “But I’ll take that as a yes.”


End file.
